Embodiments of the present invention relate to an array substrate of a liquid crystal display and a method of manufacturing the same.
Liquid crystal displays (LCD) have the advantages of small weight, small thickness, low radiation and the like. In recent, the liquid crystal display technology is under rapid development; especially, thin film transistor liquid crystal displays (TFT-LCDs) have become the mainstream products in the LCD market, and a method of manufacturing the TFT-LCD has been gradually developed from a seven-mask process at the beginning to a four-mask process that is popular at present.
A liquid crystal panel of a TFT-LCD usually comprises an array substrate and a color filter substrate assembled together with a liquid crystal interposed therebetween. In general, the manufacture of the array substrate can be performed by forming patterns through thin film deposition processes and patterning processes, and a one patterning process fours one layer of pattern. One patterning process is a patterning process performed by using a mask once. One layer of pattern is formed as the following: firstly, depositing one or more thin film layers on a base substrate, and then, coating a photosensitive material layer on a surface of the thin film, and exposing and developing the photosensitive material layer by using a mask to form a desirable photosensitive material layer pattern, and then, performing an etching process by using the photosensitive material pattern formed so as to transfer the photosensitive material pattern to the thin film to form a thin film pattern, and finally, removing the remaining photosensitive material pattern. Each layer of the pattern is precisely stacked above another underlying layer of pattern at a certain precise position. Each layer of the pattern comprises the same material or different materials, and a thickness thereof is generally in a range of between several hundreds nanometers and several micrometers. The four-mask process technology currently used employs a gray-tone mask technology, and through one patterning process of the four-mask process, patterns for an active layer, a source/drain metal electrode can be formed. Generally, there are the less the amount of the mask used, the higher productivity and the lower the manufacturing cost can be obtained during the process for manufacturing the array substrate.